The Importance of Being Stealthy (Or Not)
by InkheartFirebringer
Summary: Emily doesn't really do stealth. She CAN do it. But she doesn't. Or, the witches at the Royal Conservatory don't know what hit them, and Corvo observes with mixture of amusement and exasperation.


**Disclaimer: I don't own Dishonored 2. Or Dishonored for that matter.**

 **A/N: Sorry for those of you waiting for me to update my Until Dawn fics, I've kind of been trapped in the Dishonored fandom again since the new game came out (but the best kind of trapped, oh my God, this universe, I love it so much.) I've got a handful of ideas for Dishonored fics but this is the first one I managed to finish. (Also, in case it's not obvious, this takes place in an AU where no one is turned to stone and Corvo AND Emily escape from Dunwall Tower. Because while I enjoy their journeys separately, father-daughter saving-the-world-bonding really appeals to me. xD)**

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 **The Importance of Being Stealthy (Or Not)**

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"I know how to be stealthy."

Emily is very nearly pouting and Corvo has to smother a totally inappropriate laugh. It wouldn't do give away their position, perched high in the eaves of the Royal Conservatory, no matter how much Emily resembles her ten-year-old self at this moment. He clears his throat a little instead and says in response, " _I_ know that – but you don't always seem to. Something always seems to get lost in translation."

Emily stares off stubbornly into the distance, glowering at one of the giant owls hanging suspended from the ceiling. "I don't know what you mean by that, Father."

"I _mean_ ," Corvo stressed, unable to keep the amusement from his voice this time, "That when I leave you, you're doing a perfectly acceptable job of going undetected, and when I return I find that you have inevitably managed to set something on fire and are duelling about four different people at once."

Emily huffs under her breath and shifts her weight to her left leg. "I don't _always_ set something on fire," she finally mutters, unable to truthfully refute his other point.

Corvo hums in amusement, but he lets it go. "Well, I suppose we may as well take advantage of your natural talent for causing uproar."

Emily turns to him, that bright spark of curiosity coming into her brown eyes. "Father?"

He beckons her closer and communicates his plan in an undertone, and as he does so, an unholy gleam of pure mischief lights up his daughter's face.

xxx

"Poor Lucinda, she simply cannot successfully make a functioning gravehound…"

"I heard that she can't summon the bloodbriars either, poor dear…"

Parmelia grits her teeth a little, turning away from her gossiping sisters. There is the very slightest edge of malice to their conversation that grates on her nerves; she feels fervently for Lucinda, barely able to access the slightest scrapings of Delilah's great gift. She herself had struggled for weeks to produce a successful gravehound and the thought that she might not be able to at all had sent her into cold sweats at night.

She glances sideways at Pyracantha, padding beside her patiently, wreathed in sickly green fire and humming with void magic. Most of the other witches prefer to leave their hounds in an inactive state unless they're needed, but Parmelia likes to have her by her side, a visible reassurance –

A swift black-and-purple blur is the only warning she has before a fist slugs her hard in the jaw. She flies back, crashing into a table and rolling over into the neighbour one, breaking about twenty glass cylinders and jars along the way. Over the hail of breaking glass raining down around her, she hears Pyracantha's reverberating howl echo in the cavernous room, before it is suddenly cut off and the gravehound crashes into her, clearly thrown with considerable force.

She struggles to pull herself and her stunned hound out of the wreckage as the angry shouts and cries of her sisters fill the hall, along the sound of clashing blades and the hollow song of void magic. Parmelia gets the briefest glimpse of the intruder, clearly a woman by her figure, in a well-fitted purple-black coat, a hood shadowing her face and a scarf hiding her mouth and nose. There is the faintest glint of gold detail on the collar of her coat and she moves like she was born with a sword in her hand. Then she reaches out her left hand and blue-gold light flares, the crackle of void like a familiar song sung in a different key, and the stranger leaps forward and away in blur of purple-black light.

xxx

Emily has about twenty screaming and enraged witches on her tail and instead of feeling terror, she has to restrain the urge to laugh in adrenaline-fuelled glee. _Maybe I should have been a pirate after all._

She jinks smoothly to the right and throws herself off the balcony into open space. For a moment she's in glorious freefall and then the young woman whips out an arm, Far Reach slowing the world around her for an instant as she latches onto a chandelier. She lands and normal time resumes, and then she throws out her tendrils again, swinging herself into the balcony at the opposite side of the room.

The first two witches through the gap after her have a stun mine denote in their faces and they collapse senseless to the floor, Emily fluidly shooting the third and fourth one in the neck with a sleeping dart. Then she activates her Mark and two doppelgangers appear in a pulse of magic, stepping out seamlessly from either side of her and sprinting in opposite directions. She chooses a third direction as the rest of the witches warp onto the balcony and grins fiercely to herself as some of them break off in pursuit of her, volleys of fiery thorns blazing out from their hands. She ducks, slides, and the thorns embed themselves, quivering, in a row of bookcases.

A few moments later, the books catch on fire.

 _Oh dear._

xxx

Corvo watches the slowly unfolding mayhem below, and has to actively suppress a chuckle at the tell-tale flicker of firelight on the east side of the hall. "What was that you were saying, Emily?"

Elsewhere the roaring crackle of stun mines echoes again and again, brilliant bursts of white light blooming all across the hall as the witches run afoul of his carefully trapped doors and hallways, led straight into them by Emily and her replicas.

Below him, the double doors to Breanna Ashworth's office slam open and the woman storms out onto the balcony, her unsheathed sword in hand. " _What is meaning of –?"_ she starts to bark, before catching sight of the rampant chaos below and halting in sheer astonishment.

Corvo takes the opportunity to slip back into her office and steal the discarded lenses, along with every piece of paperwork that looks remotely important, several bonecharms, an Addermire solution, twenty-two coin, a spool of copper wire and an apple.

xxx

There are a great deal of unconscious bodies slumped over the furniture, floor and walls before Emily decides she's probably thinned the herd enough. Neatly evading three witches trying to hem her in, she whips out the shadowy tendrils of Far Reach through the nearest window and bursts back out onto the main street in a shower of glass.

She uses Far Reach to break her fall again and hits the ground running, revealing in the huge, open environment. It's suspiciously quiet and devoid of life in the street, a sure indicator that Corvo has been through here; knowing her father, the entire population of Cyria Gardens is probably piled up inside one two bedroom apartment, happily snoring away, blissfully unaware they have a very awkward awakening in their near future.

The thought makes her grin mischievously, even as a familiar whistling sound prompts her to duck, and another hail of fire thorns goes over her head. Turning, a flick of her coat sends two canisters of Howler dust to smash against the cobblestone and three of the five remaining witches run straight into the huge cloud of blinding powder billowing outwards, shrieking curses as they skid to a halt. Another sleep dart takes the fourth one in the chest mid-leap and she crumples to the ground, as Emily turns on her heel and catches the blade of the fifth one with her own sword. The witch snarls in her face and Empress of the Isles headbutts her in response.

She staggers back with a howl and Emily uses the distraction to knock her sword away and put her in a quick, efficient chokehold. Before the first three can recover, she's away, Far Reach carrying her up to a second-storey balcony and then to the roof. The familiar thrum of magic gives her a split second warning and she jinks to the right, barely in time to avoid the sword of Breanna Ashworth slicing down at her head.

" _Who are you?"_ the woman hisses and Emily leaps back again to avoid the silver slash of her blade. _"Who sent you here?"_

Emily snorts, bringing up her own sword in a fluid parry. "No one _sent_ me. I am here of my own accord."

They trade a series of lighting fast blows, void magic rippling and thrumming around them, and then Ashworth suddenly staggers as if struck, eyes widening. "What –?" she gasps, clutching at her chest, as the magic spikes and distorts around her. " _What is this?!"_

Emily backs away, holding her sword low but ready. "The end," she says simply, and she would be lying if she said she didn't feel the slightest bit vindictive right now. "Perhaps you shouldn't have left those old lenses for the Oraculum just lying around in your workshop."

The realisation crosses Ashworth's face at the exact moment that the world seems to pulse and warp around her, and there is the sense of _something_ being pulled away, drawn into a vacuum. Delilah's second collapses to her knees with terrible cry, and she hunches forward, gripping her torso in apparent agony. "Delilah…the Void…" her voice is a hoarse whisper, filled with horrified disbelief. "I am ruined."

The pain in her voice makes something in Emily's chest twinge, but she shoves it away, doing her best to ignore it. This woman was part of a conspiracy that had ended up washing the streets of Dunwall in the blood of loyal guardsmen and innocent civilians alike, and the severing of her connection to the Void was the least of what she deserved.

"You should have killed me instead."

Emily glances down at Ashworth's still-bowed head and hardens her heart against the despair in the former witch's voice. "If I ever see you again, I will," she warns, and then with a flex of her will, Far Reach carries her away.

xxx

Emily arrives back at the Royal Conservatory to find that Corvo has been busy in her absence. Several small controlled charges have clearly been denoted and the Oraculum is now nothing more than a couple of big heaps of melted slag and twisted metal, scorch marks radiating across the wooden floors away from it.

"I've burned everything I could find relating to the device too," her father says. "And Jindosh is dead. With any luck, the secret of making the Oraculum is lost – and the very least, it's going to be very difficult to build a new one."

"Hmm. Maybe we should kill Ashworth too, just to be on the safe side," Emily muses.

"No." Corvo sounds very tired. "We need to keep casualties to a minimum – I don't want you or I to become what the newspapers accused us of being. Ashworth's magic was what made her dangerous, and over and above that, we've inferred that she's very important to Delilah personally. If we killed her, who knows what Delilah might unleash on your subjects in response?"

Emily frowns but can't refute his logic, even as the thought that Ashworth is important to Delilah just makes the urge to kill her all the stronger.

 _(She remembers the exhausted, but relieved smile Alexi had worn upon seeing her alive, and the way her friend's blood-slick hands had gripped her own with failing strength, and it makes her anger surge white-hot.)_

"Let's return to the boat," she says eventually instead, and Corvo nods, scanning the room one last time, before blinking away.

Emily spots one of her bolts embedded in a nearby bookcase and quickly jogs over to retrieve it. As she does so, the sound of a low, rumbling growl comes from somewhere to her left; Emily's crossbow is in her hand and she finds herself pointing it at the source before she's even fully registered the noise. Then she pauses. A gravehound is crouched protectively over an unconscious witch, presumably its mistress, where she lies sprawled out over two upturned tables, surrounded by a sea of broken glass. The hound's growl gets louder at the sight of the weapon but it doesn't move from its defensive stance.

Emily hesitates, her finger hovering over the trigger. Then she lets it drop back to her side.

Turning, she jumps down and re-joins Corvo where he's waiting for her by the entrance to the Conservatory, and together they walk back out into the street and melt seamlessly into the night.

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 **A/N: Well, this was intended to be a more light-hearted piece but some heavy stuff crept in. Whoops. xD Please let me know what you thought, and thank you very much for reading.**

 **P.S. Pyracantha is the name of a large, thorny shrub, and one of its common names is firethorn. I can't think of a more perfect name for a witch's gravehound. xD**


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